Calgary Real Estate Investors: It’s Time to Party Like It’s Nineteen-Ninety-ROI!

As the rest of Canada appears to be in a bit of a slump in both housing starts and Real Estate sales activity, Alberta is seeing a burgeoning rental market. As renters continue to in-migrate to our lovely province, average rental rates have been pushed up in a way that surely makes Stephen Harper a little homesick for his home riding.

New workers have been attracted by the province’s oil and gas industry and have been renting in droves. Low unemployment rates which are coming in more than 2 percentage points below the national average make our province attractive to workers living elsewhere in the country where 19,000 jobs were lost in November compared to Alberta’s 3000 job gain in the same month. In a province of small government and no rent controls, the free market sets the price for rent. Scary right? Wrong. Because the prosperity in the province also means that wages are on the increase in our great province. In fact, our wage growth is the strongest in country right now. It’s all enough to make Alberta a shining beacon of economic light in a country slowing growing dim. Hopefully Mr. Harper takes a glance our way to see what exactly is going right in our province!

Best of all, experts are predicting that this rental market is here to stay until at least 2014, when many renters will exit the rental market in favour of the Real Estate market and Alberta’s hot jobs market fuels buyer demand for housing. Of course, this isn’t bad news for landlords and investors, as it means that real estate prices in Alberta are predicted to climb in a couple of years, making for a whole new world of ROI party!